June 1, 2016

“The issues we hear Donald Trump talking about are just so contrary to who we are as a people.... They are an affront and an insult to our higher angels and our best selves... We have Abraham Lincoln saying, ‘with malice towards none’ and Donald Trump saying ‘with hate for all.’ ”

Wait. That has malice for Trump, so... seems internally contradictory.... But worse than that, Trump hasn't been expressing hate for all. It's just not a true characterization. So I don't see how this kind of attack can work against Trump, who, I would guess, could very easily flip this against Booker. It's demagoguery. How can that work?

Also:

Booker presented Clinton, who appeared at the event, as the compassionate counterpoint to Trump. “I have never stood for a presidential candidate I have more confidence in, reverence for and love towards... This is a person who has gone above and beyond herself for making this a better country. I’ve stood with this woman all over this country now and I’ve seen the way she talks to folks. She looks at them and says, ‘we will rise.’ ”

By the way, the top rated comment over there is about the photograph: "Is that Velma of Scooby Doo fame sitting front and center in the photo above?"

That reminds me: Remember Hillary's Scooby van? That was April 2015 — so long ago. In a vehicle called the "Scooby van," Hillary took off on what TIME magazine called a "1,000-mile gambit... designed to help reinforce Clinton’s efforts to put a more down-to-earth spin on her campaign." Does Hillary do anything these days to try to seem "down-to-earth"? Is anything cute in that "Scooby" fashion anymore? I think not.

100 comments:

The audience in that photo seems to be a women-only crowd. Also, I get tired of the media claiming Trump is a hater. I only feel the hate vibe coming from them. And Democrats. Democrats are very good at ginning up hate and divisiveness. "Two Americas," "Blacks vs. Whites," "Hispanics vs. Whites," "LGBTs vs. everyone else," "Rich vs. Poor." Haters.

Truth is what They say it is so get in line goddammit. It's been that way my whole life. During an acid trip a girl told me Ladybird Johnson was a Black Witch!!! and I said that's not right, I read in Newsweek or something that she was real nice and all, a specially kind and thoughtful lady..but they don't want to hear that shit. They want to hear Black Witch!!!

There is now more than a theoretical chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee for president. How could that happen, given that her nomination has been considered a sure thing by virtually everyone in the media and in the party itself? Consider the possibilities.The inevitability behind Mrs. Clinton’s nomination will be in large measure eviscerated if she loses the June 7 California primary to Bernie Sanders. That could well happen...

A Sanders win in California would powerfully underscore Mrs. Clinton’s weakness as a candidate in the general election. Democratic superdelegates—chosen by the party establishment and overwhelmingly backing Mrs. Clinton, 543-44—would seriously question whether they should continue to stand behind her candidacy.

Booker is chasing the wrong car. By the time he catches it, the tires will be flat.

"I don't see how this kind of attack can work against Trump" Faux befuddlement, right? I mean, demagogic lies have worked for Progs for, what, half a century? Standard operating procedure. LIVs will lap it up. MSM already has the meme going. But at least Trump will fight back, so you are right to imply that against Trump the outcome is not locked in.

So says Crooked Hillary who screwed up the Middle East and pocketed millions.

I see no difference between Hillary and Trump on this score card. Crooked real estate deals? Check.Liar? Check.Dangerous? Check.Hillary has the disadvantage of favoring foreign wars and being an ideologue. You can call Trump a lot of things, but 'ideologue' isn't one of them.

A favorite trick of the Left is to label anyone who disagrees with them on policy as a hater.

Example. A large majority were against same sex marriage based upon a number of valid reasons. But the LGBT labeled the opponents as haters. Really a childish reason when you think about it. "You, you hater!"

Considering the NJ municipal career of Corey Booker, I suspect there may be a skeleton or two in that closet. This could be dangerous. Previously safely hidden skeletons are more easily weaponized by the power of Trump. It may be that Clinton has a hard time finding a VP.

"Barack and Hillary who screwed up the Middle East, Eurasia, North Africa, Europe, and America, too."

Don't really disagree with this, but here's the rub. Where was the opposition party coming from during these terrible foreign policy decisions. They were attacking Obama from a more hawkish perspective. They wanted more involvement in helping Syrian insurgents. They criticized him from "leading from behind" in Libya and not being more upfront about taking out Qaddafi. The troop withdrawal from Iraq has always been a sideshow. Syria and Libya are two bona fide disasters squarely on Obama's head. But where were mainstream Republicans saying that taking out Qaddafi or Assad would be terrible catastrophes?

Booker's history is pretty standard resume building for entry to the elite ranks: Rhodes scholarship, Yale Law, and involvement in municipal politics that's big on camera time and light on substance, since he's really padding his resume with an eye on the national stage. Booker is a very ambitious careerist.

Exactly. He's exactly the kind of politician elites prefer. He's basically a centrist, corporatist who can reliably spout the conventional wisdom and tow the party line. Does anyone seriously believe that the elites were all that worried over McCain vs. Obama or Obama vs. Romney or Obama vs. Clinton or Kerry vs. Bush, for that matter? Of course not. There's about a dime's worth of difference between these political automatons. And of course who could forget the 1996 Clinton vs. Dole snooze fest. Every four years, the elite system throws a couple of muppets at us and tells us to pick one, and we all think we are participating in some great exercise of liberty. Trump, on the other hand, is obviously making members of the elite nervous. It's easily the most interesting election since 1980.

I always thought that efforts from the right to paint Obama as some kind of socialist radical were laughable. Obama, like Clinton before him, was a corporate lapdog, comfortably in hawk to elite forces. Like Clinton's good ol' boy schtick, Obama's progressive bona fides are built almost entirely on identity politics traits. Unlike the phony PR-constructed "change" promised to us in 2008, a vote for Trump is a vote for real change.

well that ignores what the joyce foundation and the chicago annenberg fund was putting out,in the first case, the whole of the registration and confiscation agenda, in the second place, sinecures for the likes of ayers and a whole host of fellow travelers,

O-O-O-O-Obama, even lamer than Booker:"If we turn against each other based on division of race or religion. If-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if we fall for, you know, a bunch of okie-doke, just because, you know it-it-it. You know, it-it-it-it-it-it sounds funny or the tweets are provocative."

Blogger Rhythm and Balls said...Another street-corner fascist who wants to tell other people what is and what is not American.

Terry is a communist American.

My calling Booker a fascist is based on his words -- his statement implies that he can define what it means to be American. Being an American encompasses everything from recidivist Confederates to rabble-rousing socialists. He can't tell me my ideas aren't American. FWIW, Trump and Sanders are both well known American types. So is Bill Clinton. You can easily find characters like them in American novels. It's hard to do that with Hillary. I think that is one reason she has a hard time connecting with voters. Obama was a chameleon. It is astounding how many people think that he is a secret Muslim or a Kenyan because they want him to be one. He is not a descendant of American slaves, but the American descendants of slaves have accepted him as one of their own. Some in the American elite saw a professor of constitutional law instead of a part time lecturer on the 14th amendment. Some people saw him as a civil rights lawyer (an illusion he did nothing to dispel) when he was, essentially, a lawyer specializing in real estate and contract law.

Fernandinande said...O-O-O-O-Obama, even lamer than Booker:"If we turn against each other based on division of race or religion. If-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if we fall for, you know, a bunch of okie-doke, just because, you know it-it-it. You know, it-it-it-it-it-it sounds funny or the tweets are provocative."Obama stutters like that when he is trying to act presidential and finding it difficult.

well he passed off alinskyite theory, he cribbed from bell and de unger, as actual constitutional law, his most famous case, against citigroup, moved the overton window toward the subprime bubble, he was less and less consequential after that.

Booker is kind of low hanging fruit. But given the last VP was Biden..... Week from now we will know a lot more. If Hillary loses,not likely, or just squeaks by, then things will be interesting on the Dem side.

.... But worse than that, Trump hasn't been expressing hate for all. It's just not a true characterization. So I don't see how this kind of attack can work against Trump,"....

The idea is that there are more people who haven't listened to Trump, or what Trump promotes, than who have.

They use the same kind of attack against Rush Limbaugh.

They are not willing to attack Trump (or Limbaugh) on the basis of what he actually does say, so they change it into something else. (for which they hope to avoid being called on, because you can make a strained argument that it's true)

I had a higher opinion of Schmolke but that was back when we assumed good will from many black politicians. The blacks will pay dearly for this foray into "identity politics' that is old fashioned fascism.

The good will that my generation held for them is pretty well exhausted.

@Michael K. That Op-ed has a big flaw: Even if Sanders won the California primary (but let's not forget the New Jersey and New Mexico and Montana) and then a rules change that said that superdelagtes had to vote on the first ballot the way their state voted passed - Hillary would still the nomination.

The rules change that would work is one requiring well over 50% to get the nomination.

Why is Doug Schoen proposing a defective strategy?

A. He's trying to help Hillary. Remember that. He used to be partners with MArk Penn.

He's trying to stop people from following a course of action that could keep Hillary from the White House, and/or give people false hope.

This is not the only false analysis we're seeing. Another was that Paul Ryan could become president if the election was thrown into the House. Not if he doesn't come in at least third in Electoral votes. A deadlock would make the Vice President the senate choise acting president, and it's much harder for the senate to deadlock than the House. There is the filibuster, but they can get rid of it, too.

Hmm. Trump's son-in law Kushner (now very involved with Trump's potential campaign) was a huge Booker fan. 20k to Booker's campaign, 100k in all to Democrats, including Obama, in 2012. Real Clear Politics recently had an article on him. Also this:http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/07/ivanka-trump-switches-teams-for-cory-booker/

Booker is an empty suit like Obama. Pretty standard affirmative action result. He would never have made it into an ivy league school if Asian or white. He would never have been the mayor of anything unless he was deemed useful by some rich white people.

He will get excellent coaching, but he is so cookie cutter standard template check in the box normal, and this is not a normal election. Trump will expose him as a lightweight. Whomever trump picks for veep is going to be far more impressive.

Is there a more meaningless, overused term in modern political discourse than "fascist?" Come to think of it, yes. "Racist." But "fascist" is a close second. As far as I can discern, it's only functional meaning is "someone whose political ideas I disagree with."

"The good will that my generation held for them is pretty well exhausted."

Positive generalizations about African-Americans are absolutely non-existent. I can't remember hearing a single one from a white person of any ideological stripe. That's tragic. White Liberals have successfully poisoned the American well.

there was a salafi islamist cadre, kyle orton has done the research, from the mid 80s till the time of the invasion, the mukharabat certainly supported a whole host of elements including egyptian islamic jihad, a component of al queda, one figure thirwat shehada was in baghdad a year before the intervention,

with quaddafi, he was cooperating on giving up terrorists, and turning in his nuclear weapons, there was little reason to go after him, unless the message was to tell people, don't collaborate with the us,

with assad, we have a middle dynamic, ostensibly secular, they gave the salafi's sanctuary to attack coalition forces, when they returned to syria, many were jailed, during the amnesty, the social networks enabled many to be released,

A great aunt of ours was dating Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (chief of the Spanish Falange) for a while in the thirties, when she was very young and a great heiress. I guess they were both fascists of a sort. A little later politics became much more serious.

"I agree, except rejecting Iraq as the source. There was a cascade of events that began with removal of the honest brokers."

Frankly, I think the entire intellectual enterprise of attempting to paint Obama's troop withdrawal as a squandering of a war "won" by the surge is little more than a revisionist attempt at face saving. By the surge's own benchmarks, it was a failure. The US and the EU can barely make federal government work. It's a pipe dream to expect a functioning, cohesive central government in Iraq. There is not even a cohesive Iraqi nation. A big chunk of the population, the Kurds, already live inside a de facto state of their own.

The most proximate cause of the rise of ISIS is the collapse of Assad's regime in Syria. Like Iraq, Syria was a state controlled by a minority population. And like Iraq, when centralized state control collapses, anarchic violence erupted. The Syrian insurgency was strongly supported by the Saudi regime and has been supported by the US in the short-sighted pursuit of regime change in Syria. McCain was an early, vocal supporter of arming and backing the Syrian insurgents. Pretty much the forces that turned into ISIS. I know, I know...McCain only wanted to arm the "moderate" rebels. How you differentiate the moderate from the immoderate rebels seems like a bit of a hurdle. McCain himself accidentally posed for a photo op with an Islamist extremist during his covert trip to Syria to gin up American support for yet another round of middle eastern regime change. Sure the first two were totally counterproductive disasters, but this time we're sure to get it right.

that's not at all, what happened, the eye doctor after having freed some salafi, cracked down ala what we know are hamas rules, with the networks that had been enabled by the regime to attack the coalition forces, the elements on the iraq side sent a contigent to spark an all out uprising, the tribes from the south, played their part,

I have no idea what you just wrote is supposed to mean. Eye doctor? Hamas? Huh?

Where is ISIS most active? Syria, Iraq, and to some degree Libya. Coincidentally enough, these just so happen to be three countries who have recently experienced a collapse in centralized state control. This is not an unfamiliar phenomenon. What happened to the pseudo-state of Yugoslavia when centralized authoritarian rule under a strongman like Tito collapsed? The area disintegrated into ethnically-based enclaves each demanding national self-determination. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, authoritarian regimes have collapsed, and in every case the result has been anarchic violence.

Wow. It's almost as if a lot of diversity is really bad news if the objective is a stable, coherent nation-state. Seems amazing that these ethnically homogenous states in Scandinavia and Japan are rich with high standards of living, while the ethnically diverse sub-Saharan Africa has suffered from low level civil war of one kind of another for at least half a century. When those horribly imperialist white British marched out of the subcontinent, the first thing the locals did was fight a vicious civil war carving up the map between the Hindu and Muslim populations.

I'm not an enthusiastic Trump supporter. I'll vote for him because the very thought of listening to Cankles' Cackles for four years drives me up the wall.

Having said that I've got to say the Donald is a hustler's hustler. I've been in more than a few back room poker games and for a time pool halls were like a second home. I've seen some of the best but Donald is the king. He's playing these people like a drunk who's won the lottery. He doesn't just pick their pockets. He steals their pants and leaves them wondering where that sudden draft is coming from.

Donald, I salute you. And no, I'm not interested in a friendly card game next week.

“I have never stood for a presidential candidate I have more confidence in, reverence for and love towards... This is a person who has gone above and beyond herself for making this a better country...”

Frankly, I think the entire intellectual enterprise of attempting to paint Obama's troop withdrawal as a squandering of a war "won" by the surge is little more than a revisionist attempt at face saving.

So giving ISIS a huge tranche of territory, abandoned materiel, and a free hand in an area directly adjacent to where they were fighting their civil war against Assad had little or nothing to do with their rise? Could you please explain that part for me?

Does anyone seriously believe that the elites were all that worried over McCain vs. Obama or Obama vs. Romney or Obama vs. Clinton or Kerry vs. Bush, for that matter? Of course not. There's about a dime's worth of difference between these political automatons.

I remain optimistic that Trump will be elected and run the government like a business: Set goals, cut budgets, measure results, reorganize, consolidate, eliminate and simplify. My greatest hope is that Trump will bring the wailing and screaming liberal bureaucrats to their knees,

Overlooked in the recent controversy over the death of Bill Clinton's Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster is the fact that FBI agents investigating the case found that Hillary Clinton triggered his suicide when she attacked and humiliated her mentor from their former Rose Law Firm in front of other White House aides a week before he took his own life.

...

the FBI found that a week before Foster's death, Hillary held a meeting at the White House with Foster and other top aides to discuss her proposed health care legislation. Hillary violently disagreed with a legal objection Foster raised at the meeting and ridiculed him in front of his peers, former FBI agent Coy Copeland and former FBI supervisory agent Jim Clemente told me. Mr. Copeland was Mr. Starr's senior investigator and read the reports of other agents working for Mr. Starr.During the White House meeting, Hillary continued to humiliate Foster mercilessly, both former FBI agents say.

Hillary put him down really, really bad in a pretty good-size meeting, Mr. Copeland says. She told him he didn't get the picture, and he would always be a little hick town lawyer who was obviously not ready for the big time. Indeed, Hillary went so far as to blame Foster for all the Clintons' problems and accuse him of failing them, according to Mr. Clemente, who was also assigned by the FBI to the Starr investigation and who probed the circumstances surrounding Foster's suicide. Foster was profoundly depressed, but Hillary lambasting him was the final straw because she publicly embarrassed him in front of others, says Mr. Clemente, who, like Mr. Copeland, spoke about the investigation for the first time. Hillary blamed him for failed nominations, claimed he had not vetted them properly, and said in front of his White House colleagues, "You're not protecting us," and "You have failed us," Mr. Clemente says. That was the final blow. After the meeting, Foster's behavior changed dramatically, the FBI agents found. Those who knew him said his voice sounded strained, he became withdrawn and preoccupied, and his sense of humor vanished. At times, Foster teared up. He talked of feeling trapped. On Tuesday, July 13, 1993, while having dinner with his wife Lisa, Foster broke down and began to cry...

J Farmer, yes conservative voices were opposed to the Libyan adventure. Mostly there was confusion about the sudden push for regime change for an ostensible recently won ally against terrorists. Scott Brown was one who was vocally opposed. Why do you try so hard to implicate the Republican party in the stupid things Obama-Clinton did? Yes we ridiculed "lead from behind" because it's a stupid phrase that fuzzily describes an impossibility. One can NOT lead from behind.

And I don't understand your Syrian smear against the GOP either. The House and Senate where clear that they would not support the "unbelievably small" strikes John Kerry promised, and some urged Obama to back up his big talk about a red line. But there was no great "assad must go" push like we heard from Clinton and Obama. I remember a lot of talk about how Syria and Libya policy were not being structured in support of USA interest.

So just who's will was Hillary acting on when she "came, saw and killed" Khaddafi?

I always thought that efforts from the right to paint Obama as some kind of socialist radical were laughable.

"You're known by the company you keep." I don't think he was playing possum among his socialist friends. His associationsd speak against your assertion.

Obama, like Clinton before him, was a corporate lapdog, comfortably in hawk to elite forces.

I think you meant "in hock" . Socialism is the ultimate in crony capitalism. Obama isn't "in hock" to corporations. Corporations were eager to buy the favors he offered. Your phrasing makes him sound like a victim.

My wife was raised in a family where anger was expressed by NOT TALKING (caps because it was done very aggressively, or at least very passive-aggressively) to the offender for days or weeks on end. She confused me for years by accusing me of "yelling at her" whenever we had any disagreement, when all I'd done was talk with her.

But those five years, before I figured out what was going on and cured her of NOT TALKING when she was angry at me, were really nice.

Uh, no, I'm judging him by what he said he would do as president and what he has subsequently done, not by what local power politics connections he made in Chicago in the 90s. Obama never presented as much more than anything than a pretty standard-issue DLC centrist Democrat. The "radical" nonsense was AM talk radio fodder.

"I think you meant 'in hock.'"

Yeah, it's called a typo. I usually make about five per post since I'm too lazy to proof-read. This posts aren't being graded so I don't really give much of a shit.

"Socialism is the ultimate in corny capitalism."

By that definition, anyone who isn't an anarchs-capitalist is a socialist. So pretty much every president and member of Congress of the past century. Got it. Really useful, functioning definition you got there. If you want to see what an actual radical attempt at transforming a nation-state looks like, take a peek at Chavez-era Venezuela.

"Your phrasing makes him sound like a victim."

Talk of victims and victimizers is nonsensical in this context. It's a systemic problem.

@tim in vermont:

"I think it was Hillary and the National Review that were pushing the Assad must go line, but I hadn't heard it from any Republicans who ever ran for anything important."

You never heard John McCain take about Syria? Remember when he flew there and then went around encouraging his to arm and support the rebels so that they could more quickly and efficiently destroy the Assad state? Because, of course, as we have learned from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, once you topple a centralized authoritarian regime, peace and stability are right around the corner.

The US is not seeking regime change in Syria, US Secretary of State John Kerry told Russian media on a Moscow trip. However, calling the Syrian president “a magnet for terrorists,” Kerry said Bashar Assad cannot stay in the country’s “long-term future.” - 12/20/2015

You should tell Obama's SoS then.

Besides, every single Republican opposed Obamacare, and Obama didn't listen. But he was swayed on the one issue on which he had a clear mandate? To stay out of wars in the ME?

But you did ding my on that dingbat McCain's words. Still we must honor those three cadets brave and true who saved McCain from being at the absolute bottom of his class.

"Uh, no, I'm judging him by what he said he would do as president and what he has subsequently done, not by what local power politics connections he made in Chicago in the 90s. Obama never presented as much more than anything than a pretty standard-issue DLC centrist Democrat. The "radical" nonsense was AM talk radio fodder."

And you believed him? His actions have been anything but democratic and certainly not centrist. Unless your definition of "centrist" is slightly right of Bernie Sanders. He's best friends with Bill Ayers. The company he keeps.

"I think you meant 'in hock.'"

Yeah, it's called a typo. I usually make about five per post since I'm too lazy to proof-read. This posts aren't being graded so I don't really give much of a shit.

"Socialism is the ultimate in corny capitalism."

"By that definition, anyone who isn't an anarchs-capitalist is a socialist. So pretty much every president and member of Congress of the past century. Got it. Really useful, functioning definition you got there. If you want to see what an actual radical attempt at transforming a nation-state looks like, take a peek at Chavez-era Venezuela."

No it isn't. Your assertion is gratuitous. My proof? See the B of A settlement.

"Your phrasing makes him sound like a victim."

"Talk of victims and victimizers is nonsensical in this context. It's a systemic problem."

Your answer is nonsensical and has nothing to do with what was stated. Your assertion that the president is a victim of greedy corporations is invalid on it's face since it is the president that seeks out corporations to plunder. Again see B of A settlement.